Lancing College Chapel
It’s unimaginable that planning permission for such a large edifice in the South Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty would be granted today – unless perhaps it came with affordable housing, bin storage and cycle parking built in.
The chapel has an English Gothic feel about it and is one of the masterpieces of the Victorian Gothic Revival. The chapel dominates this part of the Adur Valley and is an antidote to the magnificent ugliness of Beeding Cement Works, which sits on the opposite bank of the River Adur a mile upstream.
Pevsner described the beauty of Lancing College Chapel as "some atonement for the many heaps of ugliness which the C19 unloaded blindly on the English landscape".
Lancing College, founded as one of three Woodard schools in West Sussex along with Ardingly and Hurstpierpoint, has recently added to its already fine stained glass with a beautiful new window to commemorate Lancing Old Boy, Bishop Trevor Huddleston – who gained fame as an anti apartheid campaigner in South Africa. The window was unveiled by Bishop Desmond Tutu.
The ceiling of Lancing College Chapel rests 94ft above the congregation and this apparently makes it one of the tallest church interiors in all England - only York Minster, Liverpool Cathedral and Westminster Abbey are higher.
- Ardingly College - another Woodard School
- Hurstpierpoint - yet another Woodard School in Sussex
- Arundel Cathedral
- Boxgrove Priory
- Chichester Cathedral
- Other notable historic buildings in West Sussex
- Worth Abbey
- Other Churches in West Sussex
- Worthing
- Shoreham-by-Sea
- Devil's Dyke
- Down's Link
- Coombes Farm
- Shoreham-by-Sea
- Steyning
- Boxgrove Priory
- Cissbury Ring